Units of Pressure
meteorologists use millibars
||In aviation and television weather reports, pressure is given in
inches of mercury ("Hg), while
meteorologists use millibars (mb), the unit of pressure found on weather maps.
As an example, consider a "unit area" of 1 square inch.
At sea level,
the weight of the air above this unit area would (on average) weigh 14.7 pounds!
That means pressure applied by this air on the unit area would be
14.7 pounds per
square inch. Meteorologists use a metric unit for pressure called a
millibar and the average pressure at sea level is 1013.25 millibars.